Tips, advice, and blogs by our Typepad community.

You're probably familiar with the main areas of the Design tab for your blog within Typepad. Here you can update the layout and content for your blog's design. Depending on what design you are using, and what account level you have, you may be able to upload a custom banner, choose different colors for your design theme, code some custom CSS, or access the HTML of the design templates. Here also you can create a new design for your blog.

If you look lower on the Design tab, you'll notice a section called "Your Designs". If you've been on Typepad for a long time, you have a lot of blogs, or you just like to play around with different designs for your blog, the "Your Designs" list may be a very long one.

Each design lists the name of the design, including the type of design it is and the blog it was originally created for, and the date and time it was created. You'll also see a thumbnail of the design and two drop-down menus to the right called "Customize" and "Actions".

All the designs you've ever created for any blog on your account are listed here, regardless of which blog you're working on. The current design for the current blog has an orange "Current" label next to it, while designs that have an asterisk by their name are currently in use on other blogs.

Looking at this list, you may notice some designs that you created years ago and that aren't in use and that you would like to remove. Locate each of these designs in the listing and click the "Actions" menu, then choose "Delete".

There, now the list looks a bit more manageable, doesn't it?

Maybe you have a design for another blog that you would really like to use for your new blog but you want to tweak it a bit. Locate this design in the list (remember that the asterisk by the name will help you find the active design for your other blogs) and choose Actions > Duplicate.

A new design will appear in the list with a name like "Copy of Minimalist for Recipes" (if the design you duplicated was called Minimalist and was for your Recipes blog). Go to Actions > Rename and you will be able to give the design a new name and description that will help you remember it.

The "Customize" menu allows you to edit any design, even if it is not currently applied to a blog.

The options you see here are what you would have if this was the active design for your blog and will vary depending on the type of design it is and your account level.

Make the desired edits to your design. You can then hit Actions > Preview to check how it looks and, when it's ready, Actions > Apply to apply it to the current blog. (If you'd like to experiment more than Customize and Preview allow, consider creating a test blog where you can see your new design live.)

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